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TITLE: Communist Blogs
BLOG NAME: The Politburo Diktat
Comrades, Russians invented blogging. Da! Along with television, galoshes, internet, and Britney Spears. You knew that right? Great progressive Soviet peoples and worldwide Communist fellow Revolutionaries were also first to employ MT (Marxist Technolo…

I can fully understand Japan’s neighbor’s uneasiness when the Japanese PM visits this shrine. How would the Poles feels if a German PM visited a shrine that included people who had committed war crimes against the Poles?

I have a question regarding your last post, though - are you saying that “hatsumode” (visiting a shrine on New Year’s eve) has no spiritual or religious significance whatsoever for the majority of Japanese? I tend to think it has a bit more significance than watching the TV specials, which I agree are stupid. I’ve done hatsumode with different groups of friends over the years and it has been my impression that they were all sincere in thinking it would have a positive effect on the coming year.

That was your original point, anyway. Religion is one of those things in Japan that is done because it is “what is done,” at least for most people. The only way to reliably know that someone actually means it is if they are part of a tiny minority– like the people who actually have Buddhist weddings are probably devout Buddhists, and similarly the people who go to Christian services.

But visiting a Shinto shrine on New Year’s is about the same as watching the stupid TV programs that come on on New Year’s. It’s just what you do.

It’s one of the reason that they have so many Christian clergymen, despite the tiny number of actual adherents.

Regarding the worshipping… I guess this is just a matter of opinion in that I think of the clapping and pulling the rope, even if it is just “going through the motions”, as a form of respect or even worship (however casual or contrived it may be). Thanks for the clarification, though. Your points are definitely taken. If you don’t mind me asking, what part of Japan are you in?

I’d like to leave a teaser by stating that I found an ancient mountain shrine dedicated to foxes a few years back that has made me a believer in the “special” energies or even entities that surround some of these sites. If you are ever in the Nara area and interested in this type of thing let me know.

“why follow it with statements like “Most Japanese wedding ceremonies are Shinto,” or “…people seldom even go to shrines, and they certainly don’t worship or spend much time there when they do.”?”

Because most Japanese wedding ceremonies are Shinto. I’m not talking about the reception later, I’m talking about the wedding itself. If you have statistics that state otherwise, I’d be interested in seeing them.

Japanese (some) go to Shinto shrines on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day, and that’s about it. There are ceremonies such as shichi-go-san, but that’s a one-time visit per child. Then there are the ring-toss, goldfish-scooping, fried-squid festivals, but they could be on any vacant lot. Most people don’t think about where they are. It’s even less like church than the US.

They pull the rope to make the noise and draw the attention of the kami, clap three times, and pray to pass an entrance exam, or whatever it is they seek. I doubt any of them think there is a deity actually listening to their requests. There’s no worshipping going on. It’s a folk custom.

I’ve been living in Japan 20 years this month. My house is a 15-minute walk from the two biggest shrines in town. The pigeons have the run of both places.

I agree with your objection to the term “burial site”, I think you are spot on with that - but why follow it with statements like “Most Japanese wedding ceremonies are Shinto,” or “…people seldom even go to shrines, and they certainly don’t worship or spend much time there when they do.”?

No one is buried at a Shinto shrine. (Very few people are “buried” in Japan at all; they are cremated and their ashes placed in a family memorial structure on the grounds of a Buddhist temple.)

Shrines house the spirits of kami, or deities. These can range from the spirits of people to the spirits of trees or penis-shaped rocks. Yasukuni is a relatively new shrine that was under the control of the Japanese military. What is there? The “spirits” of 2.5 million war dead. Their names are inscribed on a tablet and “enshrined”. So there ain’t nothing there but air.

In Shinto, these spirits become “kami” (literally ‘above’) and are thus divinities, of sorts. Very, very few modern Japanese take that stuff seriously (and almost none identify their religion as Shinto). It is an old form of spirit and ancestor worship, and the spirits are not always people. Other than New Year’s, or New Year’s eve, people seldom even go to shrines, and they certainly don’t worship or spend much time there when they do. They go through the motions of various Shinto ceremonies to conform to tradition. Most Japanese wedding ceremonies are Shinto, but they aren’t held at these shrines.

Of the 2.5 million spirits there, 14 are those of Class A war criminals, secretly enshrined there in the 70s.

Regardless of one’s opinion about this one way or another, I would have serious doubts about the credibility of anyone who would call a shrine a “burial site”, much less Yasukuni, about which a ton of information is available on the web. People who spend time in Japan find out about this stuff in about the first two weeks.